


Taking Pictures With Your Eyes

by Legault_Kilvas



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, Fun, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legault_Kilvas/pseuds/Legault_Kilvas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shot and multi-shot short works featuring the life and times of Arcadia Bay, based off of funny scenarios that popped into my head while waiting on new episodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Max Time

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've written anything to post somewhere, but I couldn't ignore the urge to contribute to this fun little fandom any longer. I've been going out of my mind thinking about these characters waiting for the next episodes to drop, and I think I've got enough material to write a bunch of these. Let's hope I re-tune my style quickly.

Chloe and Max were at the Two Whales’ Diner for breakfast, something they did a few times a week and always on Saturday mornings. It was fuller today than usual, although Chloe suspected that was an effect of the minor bump in tourism Arcadia Bay had received from almost being wiped out by a freak tornado a few weeks ago.

Chloe was watching two sightseers gawking at a boat that had been beached on the shoreline for at least two years. She bet that they thought it was washed ashore by the tornado. Idiots.

A soft rustling in her peripherals made Chloe look back at the cause of the ‘almost’ in what appeared to be Arcadia Bay’s new tourist slogan. Max was hunched over slightly, fumbling with something on her forearm. It couldn’t be…

“Max, is that a wristwatch?” Chloe asked.

Max’s head snapped up, meeting Chloe with the same look of a kid with their hand caught in the cookie jar. Actually, it was the same look Max used to give whenever she'd been caught sneaking too many cookies out of her parent's pantry as a kid.

“What?” She looked down at her wrist, where a small frog themed watch could be seen.

“Oh, uh-” Max looked around. Chloe followed her eyes, wondering if Max would find anything else to explain herself with. Max was a bad liar and she knew that Chloe knew that. But would she try anyway?

“Yes, it's a wristwatch.” Max said after a moment. Must have found nothing.

Chloe smiled. “What do you need that for, dork?”

“To keep track of time, dork.”

“Like you need to do that anymore. You can be anywhen you want to be.” Chloe finished with a little falsetto voice on the end.

Jesus, that was terrible. Max is having a bad effect on her.

“No, not that time,” Max explained simply, rolling her eyes at Chloe. “Not regular people time.” Chloe bristled at the sound of being called ‘regular people,’ but said nothing.

“I’m talking about my time,” Max continued, grinning. “Max Time.” She pointed the open thumb of her closed right fist at her own chest.

Chloe scoffed and smirked at Max, raising her eyebrows. “Max time? You have your own time now? It wasn't enough for you to have control over 'regular people time?” Chloe thought about supplying air quotes, but didn't do it. That wasn't her. 

“Yes, I kind of do have my own time now.” Max crossed her arms, matching Chloe’s stare. 

“But-” Chloe spluttered. She hadn’t expected Max to make a stand here. “You’re like, the Master of Time!”

That’s no good. Try again, Chloe.

“No, the Mistress of Time!” 

That sounds like she’s dating a married man. Ew. Next!

“The Dominatrix of Time!”

A bizarre, Not-Safe-For-Breakfast image of a leather-clad Max horsewhipping an analog alarm clock popped into Chloe’s head before she could silence that train of thought. Move along, quickly. Nothing to see here.

“Wait, the Lady of Time!” 

And can the Lady of Time introduce you to our starter course tonight of cob salad and- where the fuck was that coming from? Must have been something weird in this morning’s wake and bake. She’d have to exchange words with her new dealer. Sure, Frank’s shit was much better, but there was no way in hell Chloe was going back to him anymore.

“Shit, don’t keep that one,” Chloe said with a grimace. “I’ve got better in me; I just need some food for thought.” And a few seconds to think instead of talk. Chloe ripped off a piece of waffle with her hand and stuffed it into her mouth.

“Are you done?” Max asked. Chloe put up an index finger while she chewed the too-big piece of waffle.

“Sommelier of Time.” Chloe said through a mouthful of food. Max held her hands up to block her face from any food spray, then looked back at her friend. Chloe looked like a demented chipmunk with all the waffle stuffed into her cheeks. She swallowed heavily, making a huge noise that would have earned Chloe a stern talking-to if her mother had been on this morning's shift.

“Now I’m done.” Chloe snatched her glass of soda and started guzzling it in an effort to wash the waffle down.

Max laughed. “That’s what you get for not cutting up your food.” Max shook her knife in front of her face, then made a cutting motion along with her real fork in the space between them. Max completed the taunt by taking a bite out of an imaginary piece of food speared on her fork.

It took every bit of Chloe’s willpower to not laugh out at Max which would have probably sprayed soda all over the booth in the process. Joyce's co-workers weren't as tolerant of Chloe's behavior as she was, and it would really suck to get banned from the Two Whales Diner. Not after she couldn't go back to Carlito's, or that one steak place in town that she could never remember the name of.

Max motioned to her glass of water. “Have some water. It’ll go down easier than that soda.” She must have been looking at it as she remembered being thrown out of Carlito's.

Chloe grabbed the water, bringing it up to her lips before pausing and frowning across the table at Max. “I didn’t just try to steal the water, did I?” She pointed at Max with her free hand. “And you rewinded to offer it to me instead?”

“No, you didn’t.” Max shook her head and waved away the accusation.

“You can tell me, Max. I swore I’d stop doing stuff like that.” Chloe was babbling. She’d promised a lot of things to Max, and she was trying as hard as she could, but she forgot sometimes. Okay, she forgot a lot of the time. But right now, she was going to remember. even if she didn't remember and forgot she didn't remember because max used her powers to make her forge- Eagh! Too much thinking, not enough breakfast.

“You did not, Chloe.” Max’s voice was stern, even. But not accusatory, which was good.

“But I-”

Max cut her off. “And I swore I’d tell you whenever I used my power on you.”

Dammit, she looked pissed now.

“I promised, remember?” Max said. The look on her face was approaching one of those ‘pre-mom’ looks that Max was so good at. The ones that practically screamed ‘I'm disappointed in you’ at her. It was the same kind of look Max used to give Chloe whenever the perpetually taller girl had slipped up and called her 'Maxine' instead of 'Max.' Chloe could brush off those looks and that tone from her own mother, but had and would always wilt under Max’s glare. Chloe tried to hide her embarrassed, reddening features behind the water glass, but wasn’t sure she’d pulled it off. She'd need a big grapefruit or a watermelon to do that.

“I remember.” Chloe said quietly, looking anywhere but at her best friend. Chloe had wanted Max to make that promise, asked Max to make that promise, and had been overjoyed when the brunette accepted. Chloe was still the only person other than Max who knew about her power, and she didn’t want Max to have to struggle with it alone or want to keep its use from Chloe.

“Good.” Max’s voice lightened, the hardness from a few seconds ago disappearing. Chloe looked up to see her smile reforming and relaxed.

“Now drink up.” Max continued. “That waffle isn’t going to go down all by itself.”

Chloe obliged, and she spent a few seconds drinking the rest of Max’s water while the water’s previous drinker examined her fingernails. She really hoped Max wasn’t angry with her. Chloe had been on the business end of Max’s displeasure a sparse few times over the course of their friendship, and each and every one had been a hundred times worse than any time Chloe had been angry with Max. Or all those times anyone else had been angry with her.

As soon as Chloe placed the glass back on the table, Max started again. “I need to keep track of my own time now because-” Max frowned, trying to come up with the right words. She squinted at the underside of her left ring finger and began picking at a spot with her thumb.

“It wasn’t a problem when all I could do was a few seconds or a couple of minutes here and there. But now I can do hours at a time, maybe even whole days if I try hard enough.”

Chloe stared. Max had hinted that her powers had opened up a lot since stopping the storm, but rewinding days? That’s crazy.

If Max noticed the bewildered look on Chloe’s face she didn’t react to it, continuing to scratch at the underside of her fingernail. “So, since I’m not affected by rewinding and everything I’m holding or wearing goes back with me, I need to keep track of how long I’ve been awake and how long it’s been in between meals or snacks. And what better way to do it than with the only watch in the world that won’t change with my power?” Max shrugged at the end of her explanation.

“With Max Time?” Chloe asked.

“With Max Time.” Max finally looked up at Chloe, the full smile returned to her face. “Because if I rewind away three hours of real time-” Max trailed off on purpose, making a rotating motion with one of her hands. Chloe wasn’t out to disappoint.

“It’s been six hours in Max Time, and you should probably eat something. I gotcha.” Chloe nodded. “That makes sense. I mean, it’s insane, but whatever works for you.”

“Good.” Max smiled even wider and returned to her meticulous dissection of the Belgian Waffle in front of her. Chloe wanted to make some kind of a joke about waffle torture, but decided against it. There’ll be time for that later. Max will eat other waffles.

“And there’s no chance of putting a lid back on that name?” Damned impulse control. Why did she struggle with it so much? What did she miss as a child that prevented her from learning how to shut up every once in a while?

“No. It’s my time, and I’m keeping it.” Good. Max was still smiling.

Chloe let out a soft, hopefully unnoticed sigh, happy that she successfully navigated through that conversation without any serious damage. She propped her arms up wide on the back of her booth’s seat in an attempt to project a relaxed image.

“Okay, I’m in.” Chloe said simply. “Max Time it is.”

“Good.”

Yes! Conversation over. Hold on though, there’s- no.

Stop. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it, Chloe.

Just keep it down. Use your inside thoughts.

“So, when is Max Time for Lunch Time? I could go for some more food in an hour or two.” 

Goddammit, Price.

“Chloe, this is my lunch.”


	2. Unicycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max goes to buy a bicycle. I try to emulate the rich internal monologue portrayed in the game.

*Ring Ring* *Ring Ring*

Max loved the jingly bell sound that came from above the door to the bicycle shop. Every shop should really have that. Not stores though, just shops.

The jingle made the very long walk from the bus stop worth all the trouble. Her feet hurt, but her ears were ringing and so Max was singing. On the inside.

Why would the bus stop be so far away from the bicycle shop? Must be jealousy. Apparently there’s only room for one eco-friendly transportation service in this town.

Max remembered going to this very bike shop on a nice summer day more than 10 years ago with her dad to pick out her first bicycle. Her first real bicycle, anyway. “Big Wheels don’t count,” had been Chloe’s argument to Max’s insistence that she had been riding bikes since she was two years old.

Chloe was right. Big Wheels don’t count.

Max loved that bike. White and pink with pink streamers on the handlebars. She rode that bike everywhere, even though most of ‘everywhere’ was just the two blocks it was to Chloe’s house and back. She rode that bike even when it was a little too big for her; all the way until one of the foot pedals broke off while she was riding through the woods outside town with Chloe.

She remembered _that_ all too well. Max’s foot slipped, she panicked, Chloe yelled, Max panicked more, lost control of the bike and almost cracked her skull open on the tree she careened into.

Not because she missed the tree, oh no. She hit that huge Douglas Fir straight on, launched over the handlebars of her destroyed bike, and hit the tree headfirst. She was saved by what the mean kids at school named her ‘Dork Dome;’ a large, unwieldly helmet with a lot of padding, which was the only way her Mom had ever let her leave the house. Chloe kept urging her to take it off whenever they passed near someone she knew, or whenever they rode by the ice cream shop, or whenever they were on back roads that nobody used, or if there were about to pass the smoothie shack, or really for any reason. But Max never did, too afraid in her younger days of Mom seeing her without the helmet, never letting her see Chloe again, and grounding her forever.

Chloe had scrambled over to the fallen Max in an instant, or being dazed from smashing headlong into a hundred year old tree made it seem instantaneous. The difference wasn’t important anyway.

_“Max!” Chloe yelled as Max came around. So loud. What was Chloe doing up anyway? She never woke up before Max on sleepovers._

_“Max, wake up!” That was a strange tone. What was wrong to make Chloe talk like that? Ooh, thinking hurts. Or did it hurt before?_

_“Chloe, I’m fine,” is what Max tried to say. Somewhere between her muddled mind and her mouth, those words of reassurance got translated to “Mmmmmph.”_

_“Oh, thank God you’re okay!” Max felt something or someone fumbling with her chin, then sighed audibly when she felt a pressure release on her head._

_She opened her eyes to see Chloe holding something large up to the light filtering through the trees. It would make a cool photo with the light like that, even with those blurry edges on her camera lens. Wait, she wasn’t holding a camera._

_“Hah!” Chloe looked the object over as she turned it in her hands, stopping when she found the top. “I guess this giant thing was good for something after all, Max!” Chloe moved out of Max’s sight line then reappeared, shoving a huge blue thing in her face. Was that her bicycle helmet?_

_“Look at that dent,” Chloe practically pushed the helmet into Max’s nose. “You must have been booking it when you hit that tree!” Oh right, the tree._

_Max brought her hands up to her face and rubbed her eyes, which seemed to make the blurriness from before go away. Now she could properly see a large indent in the front of the helmet, which appeared undamaged otherwise._

_“Wowser,” Her voice was still a little drowsy, but it was all starting to come back to her. Stupid root. Stupid bike. Stupid Max. Stupid tree. That’s how it went._

_“Where’s my bike?” Max tried to sit up, but laid back down almost immediately. Okay, dizzy. Let’s not do that again for a couple of minutes._

_“Ahh,” Chloe cut her eyes at something out of Max’s field of vision, then looked back at Max. Oh no. Chloe’s lips were pursed and she was frowning. Not a good sign. That was the same look she gave Max yesterday when Max asked if there were any lemon Jolly Ranchers left._

_There hadn’t been any lemon Jolly Ranchers left. Chloe ate them all._

_“Chloe,” Max tried to be stern, but knew she’d failed. She was still feeling a little dizzy from trying to sit up, so she probably sounded pleading and pathetic._

_Chloe’s shoulders slumped, and she glanced at the same spot as before for a second. “Okay, okay! It’s pretty… shitheaped.”_

_Max groaned. “Not just broken?”_

_“No, not just broken,” Chloe repeated, looking back at the spot for longer this time and tilting her head to get a different angle. “I’m gonna have to go with shitheaped.”_

_Max managed to sit up finally, and searched around for a second before catching sight of her bike a few feet away. It was- it was broken. The front wheel was smashed in, and the front of the frame was bent at an odd angle._

_“What are you doing?” Chloe snapped, “go back to lying down!”_

_“Why,” Max asked. “I’m fine.”_

_“No no no no no,” Chloe flapped her hands wildly in front of Max’s face. “You have to lie down for a while. You might have a-“ Chloe’s face went blank, her falling face an indicator of losing control._

_“Shit! What do you call it?” Chloe muttered. “A con-cess-ion! You might have a concession!”_

_“What’s that?” Max asked, but she lay back down on the ground. Chloe was always insistent, but was rarely ever this demanding. Probably better to go along for now._

_“It’s some… crazy head thing that you can get after you whack your head really hard and I don’t know much about it but you’re not supposed to move for a while after one.” Chloe was breathless, and it sounded like all the words she said were just one big long word with no pauses. Even more so than usual._

_“Okay Chloe,” Max relented. “I’ll lay down for a few minutes and you…”_

_“Rec-on-oy-ter the area!” Chloe said excitedly. “You might have just bashed into the perfect place for our tree fort!”_

_“Whatever you want, Chloe.” Max closed her eyes._

_“And no falling asleep!”_

With the benefit of hindsight, Max knew that bike was a cheap piece of crap. A colorful, sparkly worm that looked tasty to Maxine as a young salmon, who only discovered after she’d bit down that the worm was on a fishing hook. Lucky for her, she’d been too small to take home for dinner, and got thrown back in the sea.

But Max loved that bike anyway. It was the first thing she remembered ever really wanting besides a friend or two, and it was the first of the many, many things she had broken over the years.

And where did that salmon thing come from? Maybe have to lay off the fried fish at the Two Whales.

“Hello, young miss.” Who was talking? “Can I help you with something?” Oh, right. She was in a store. No, a shop.

Max pulled herself out of her reverie with some effort. “Yes, I was looking to buy myself a new bicycle.” Max was glad she still had her earbuds in her hands; she could pretend she hadn’t heard the man because of her music instead of because she’d been zoning out.

The shopkeeper smiled. He looked like the same man Max had bought her bikes from before she’d left for Seattle. Only older and wrinklier. Was that a word? Not important.

“New in town?” The shopkeeper adjusted his eyeglasses and looked her over, then turned to a rack of bicycles along a wall. “Let’s see what we can find around your size.”

Max was glad the shopkeeper couldn’t see her frown. Did nobody except Chloe and Joyce remember her? It’s a small town and she hadn’t been gone that long. And she’d lived here all her life before she went away.

Max had saved this town. Saved this man, too. But no one would ever know.

That was when Max saw it. A pretty grey bike with blue panel lines that jutted slightly out of the bike rack, almost as if attention was supposed to be drawn to it. Something was wrong with it, the back wheel was not in line with the rest of the bike, but otherwise it looked fine.

There was something about it, something familiar that Max couldn’t place her perpetually wandering thoughts on.

“What about that bike?” Max pointed at the broken bike. She was sure she’d seen it somewhere before, but that seemed impossible. Sure, most of these bike had been here for a long time, but she hadn’t been here in far longer time.

“Oh, that old busted thing?” The shopkeeper brightened visibly, all of his features rose when his eyes followed max’s finger to the bicycle.

“That’s been here for a long time.” The shopkeeper spun one of the wheels idly with his wrinkled fingers. It wobbled slightly. “Came back from a test ride like that. Offered a challenge ever since.”

Max grinned. “What’s the challenge?” She was good at challenges. Well, she was now.

“It isn’t very broken; it needs just the tiniest fix.” The shopkeeper held his thumb and index finger close together to indicate the small size of the repair. “It’s two o’clock now, little miss. If you can fix that bike before I close at five, that bike is yours for free. I offer it to everyone who asks, but you young folks just don’t have the patience to put in a little work for something anymore.”

Max looked at the broken bike, considering her options as always. Max held her grin, wriggling the fingers of her right hand surreptitiously. She could do anything, and she didn’t have to do it for other people’s recognition. She could do it just for herself if she wanted.

And this, this she could do.

Max locked her eyes on the smiling shopkeeper. “Three hours? I think that will be enough time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This begins what will be a few connected multi-shots within this work. I'll always try to keep a similar naming convention when I do this. For example, the next piece of this storyline will be "Bicycle," after which it'd be "Tricycle" and so on. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
